Ariel (16 page)

* * *

Charlotte was about a fourth the size of Atlanta, a little more sparse, less "cosmopolitan," I guess you'd call it. It was hilly but not mountainous. We headed north, walking between the frozen traffic lines on the street. Something I saw tickled me: someone had taken an old, white VW Bug, sawed off the roof even with the doors, dumped in a lot of dirt and rich topsoil, and turned it into a planter. The old Sixties slogan "Flower Power" had been painted on the side.

George had begun to look more and more worried; I knew it would get worse as we neared the Smokies.

The shopping mall was on the right side of the road. We turned beneath a dead stoplight and walked into the entrance. Scores of cars were in a lot. The glass doors were unlocked. I held one open for Ariel. "Ladies first." She walked in with a superior air, nose high. My kick at her ass missed.

"It sure looks empty enough," whispered George.

"Then why are you whispering?" I asked in a normal tone.

He shrugged. We walked from the side wing of shops to the main arcade, our footsteps echoing—mine and George's, anyway; Ariel's never made noise unless she wanted them to.

"Are we gonna split up or stick together?" George asked.

I looked at Ariel. "It looks safe," she said.

I rubbed my chin. I needed a shave. "Split up and get what you need. It'll take less time. I want to get out of here as soon as we can. And be careful." I glanced at the fountain in the center of the mall. Scum had accumulated in the still water along the blue-tiled edges. On the bottom were pennies, dull brown in the murky water, tossed in years ago at wishful random. "We'll meet back at this fountain in an hour."

They agreed, and I headed toward one end of the mall, George the other, and Ariel down a side wing. Looking for a candy shop, I bet myself.

It was very cool in the mall. The sound of my footsteps mingled arrhythmically with the echo of George's retreating ones. I tried to ignore it. I'd rather have silence than just a few sounds in all the quiet.

I drew Fred at the startling shape of several figures standing in a storefront window, then realized they were just mannequins in a dress shop. This place was making me jittery.

The door to Montgomery Ward's was open. I headed toward MEN'S WEAR and picked out two pairs of blue jeans from a rack. I leaned backpack and weapons against a register and took off my black cords, feeling both silly and naked—naked as in vulnerable. I took off hiking boots and socks and left them in the middle of the floor. I wouldn't be needing those again. One look at my underwear made me think twice about trying on the jeans immediately; I went to a display, opened a plastic packet of Joe Boxer, and put on a pair. The other two I rolled up and tossed into my pack. No doubt I'd be needing them later.

The first pair of jeans didn't fit. The second did. I left them on, picked out a new belt, put it on, and returned Fred to a belt-loop. I felt much better. Discarded clothes on floor behind me, I walked barefoot and shirtless through the store, dragging the backpack behind me with top flap opened. I tossed in a razor for later.

Out in the mall I kept jumping at shadows, seeing motion where there was none. Once I saw Ariel up ahead and I waved. She nodded back. Unicorn in a shopping mall. Which way to the gift shop, please?

A stop at Thom McAn yielded new hiking boots and three pairs of white tube socks. At a drugstore I grabbed a carton of Winstons and a half-dozen small packs of peppermint to balance it.

There was a table of iron-on transfer shirts in the center of the store. They'd been on sale about six years now. I picked out a blue shirt in my size and held it in front of me. I'M WITH STUPID, it announced in red letters. Below that was an arrow pointing to the right. I put it on. The arrow now pointed to my left; I'd have to be sure to stay on Ariel's right side.

I imagined Muzak playing over the store's P.A., and a nasal voice over it. "Attention, shoppers  .  .  .  ."

There was a commotion in the mall: shouts, breaking glass. I ran to the store entrance and peeked out the door. George was barreling toward me, arms loaded with booty. Every few steps something fell from his double-armed grip. He must have been messing around in one of the clothing stores; he was wearing tight blue dress slacks and a red silk shirt. It was unbuttoned, and as he ran it unfurled behind him like some disco flag. His broadsword screwed up his stride by slapping against his left leg.

Three men were running after him.

Something smacked against the glass door I held propped open with my body. I ducked—it would have been too late, but there was no controlling the reflex—and glanced up. The glass had spiderwebbed. One of the three men was trying to fit another arrow into his bow while running, which couldn't have been very easy. George saw me and veered my way.

"That way!" I yelled, waving toward the wing that led to the mall entrance. "That way!" He cut a corner, leaped over a bench (more things fell from his arms), nearly ran into a fountain but dodged just in time, and picked up speed.

Ariel appeared from the open doorway of a card shop a hundred feet to the left of the wing George had run down. Two men went after George. The third headed toward me. He loosed another arrow, which went ten feet wide of me. I decided you can't be accurate with bow and arrow while running full-out. He wouldn't be able to fit another arrow before he reached me, even though he was still a good seventy-five feet away. I drew the Aero-mag calmly from its backpack sling, fitted a dart, and brought it to my mouth. Deep breath, wait  .  .  . one, two, three,
puff!
The coat-hanger-wire dart hit him in the left forearm. He dropped his bow and screamed. It echoed down the length of the mall. The point of the dart protruded from his arm. I ran forward and punched him in the jaw. He went straight backward, unconscious. I stopped just long enough to pull another dart from the pouch at my belt and tap it into the Aero-mag with a thumb. "Help George!" I yelled to Ariel. "He took off down there. Two men are after him."

She nodded and sprang forward as if she'd hit warp drive. I went around the bench George had jumped over and trotted toward the main entrance, one hand on Fred and the other on the aluminum shaft of the Aero-mag. The backpack bounced up and down in time. I crouched behind a smooth concrete fixture in the middle of the mall. Dusty odor inside. It held long-dead plants. A cautious peek over the top revealed the two men at either side of the B. Dalton's entrance. They held their bows ready but weren't firing. They must have seen George enter but weren't willing to go in after him; Dalton's was too crowded with full bookshelves to give any working room. They glanced at each other and I ducked to prevent the farther man from seeing me. They were probably waiting for George to freak and make a move. There was no sign of Ariel.

I brought the Aero-mag up and blew. The dart hit the nearer man and bounced off. They were too far away. The nearer whirled around and the farther swung his bow. I ducked and heard an arrow hit the concrete planter. Now, while he's fitting another one: thumb the belt pouch, slap in a dart, swing the blowgun out and pop up quickly—I almost ate an arrow. The other one had fired when he saw me move; the arrow brushed my cheek and buried itself in the backpack. My entire body twitched and I dropped as fast as I'd come up. Fletchings tickled my left cheek. "Why, you son of a bitch," I said aloud. I exposed my head over the top of the planter and ducked again. An arrow hissed above me.
Now.
I ran from the planter to a water fountain twenty feet to my right, paused, then ran a zigzag pattern to the dusty display automobile by the fountain in the mall's center. I looked through the windows to see the nearer man heading toward me while his partner remained behind at B. Dalton's. I blew him another dart—it missed but made him cautious—and thumbed in another. Only two darts left now. He skittered, hugging close to walls and anything between him and me. I lay down behind a tire and looked beneath the car. Blue tennis shoes trotted toward me in irregular rhythm. It would be hard to get off a shot. His feet kept moving, my backpack kept me at an awkward angle, and that damned arrow was bothering my cheek. I tried pulling it out but the hunting-blade tip kept it firmly embedded. So I broke it off. I brought the blowgun to my lips and tightened them like a trumpet player. He stopped to change direction and l blew as Louis Armstrong never had. The dart hit his left shin and he did a near-complete flip. I ran to him and kicked his bow away.

Ariel jumped from inside B. Dalton's. George was on her back, crossbow aimed. His red silk shirt billowed as Ariel leapt. Her back hooves hit a book display and sent paperbacks flying. The final man had been looking at me when Ariel streaked out. He spun and let fly a fast shot at Ariel. She twitched her neck and snapped the arrow with her horn. George pulled the trigger on the Barnett. The bolt hit the floor twenty feet behind the man, who sprawled backward with a hole through his neck. Ariel hesitated, looking toward me. I yelled for her to go on. She said something to George and he hurriedly returned the crossbow to her pack, leaned forward, and wrapped his arms around her neck. She plunged forward and struck the glass of the mall entrance horn-first. It shattered and she broke into the sunshine amid a diamond shower of glass.

I looked back at the man I'd shot in the leg. There was no need to do anything else to him; he hugged the leg close to his chest and writhed on the floor. His eyes and teeth were clenched and his mouth was drawn back so that the cords on the sides of his neck stood out. Small grunts worked from his throat. I left him and walked out through the jagged hole Ariel had left behind, blinking in the sunshine.

* * *

Ariel made George get off her back. She would only carry him as long as necessary.

George was crying. He walked a little ahead of us in the middle of the highway. Ariel and I spoke in low voices. Her tone was accusing. "Was it worth it, for the things we came away with?"

I felt guilty and looked from her to the road flowing beneath my new boots. My feet still hurt.

"Peppermint candy," she said, "and cigarettes. You only wanted to loot that mall because you figured you'd have a better chance of finding cigarettes there. The clothes and things—you could have found those anywhere."

I didn't think she was right, but I said nothing.

"George found some good things. But about your cigarettes—" She closed her eyes and tossed her head, horn inscribing a brief circle in the late morning air. "There."

"'There' what?"

"I just got rid of them. No more smoking."

"Goddammit—"

"It's bad for you, Pete."

"Bullshit. You keep me healthy and you know it."

"That doesn't mean I should work overtime at it. It's neither my responsibility nor my duty. I'm not your doctor. And I don't want to be around it, either."

"I'm going to have to quit all over again!" Shit—bitten nails, piano-wire nerves, constant craving.

"Too bad. I'm not taking the blame for your addictions, either."

"Oh, for—" I stopped. What was the use?

We walked through the city. George stayed ahead of us, head inclined toward the road. I think he'd stopped crying.

"Ariel, what are we going to do about him?"

"Leave him alone. He'll be okay."

"If you say so." I scratched my cheek. Sweat had begun to pour from me in the morning's growing heat and lessening humidity, and it stung where the arrow had brushed past. My shirt—about which Ariel had said nothing—was soaked in the back, damp as a washrag on my shoulders where the pack straps pressed. I shrugged out of them and turned the pack so the H-frame was braced against my stomach, leaning back and walking with knees bent to offset the weight. Holding it with one hand, I untied the flap and flipped it open. The arrow had dented my small first-aid kit and stopped against a hunting knife. I pulled the diamond-shaped head and broken shaft out and threw it onto the road. There was a nylon patch kit in the top left pocket of my pack; I'd fix the hole later.

The cigarette carton wasn't in the pack.

I reached in and tossed out the peppermint candies one at a time. "Fair's fair," I said.

Ariel snorted but said nothing, though she glanced at the candy on the road behind us.

* * *

George was walking with us again. He seemed all right but wouldn't talk, other than to give perfunctory answers. My feet throbbed and I was unhappy with our progress. Malachi was probably two days ahead of us by now. Maybe three. Shit.

We were out of Charlotte by noon. At the north end of town we came upon a young woman reading a hardcover book on a bus bench in the bright sunlight. She squinted up at us as we drew near.

I'd dug out
Don Quixote
and was reading it to Ariel. The woman gave a quiet little gasp and folded her book, marking her place with a finger. I followed suit. She looked at Ariel, looked briefly at me, and back to Ariel. She rose from the bench and stood before us, book dangling at her side. The clear plastic over the cover showed it to be a library book. She opened her mouth to speak, then shook her head as if fully expecting us not to be there when she looked again. Her shoulder-length brown hair fanned out as her head turned from left to right. She watched, mouth open, as we passed. I turned and nodded politely to her, but I don't think she even saw me. She was staring, of course, at Ariel. Gawkers, everywhere, gawkers. We walked on.

A few minutes later Ariel said, without looking back, "She's following us."

"Who? That girl on the bench?"

She nodded. I glanced back. She was a quarter mile behind us, walking with the book held absently in her hand. She still stared at Ariel. "Wonder what she wants?"

"Taken with my awe-inspiring magnificence, no doubt." She dragged a hoof on the asphalt. Sparks scattered.

"Hmph." I glanced back again. "Maybe if we ignore her she'll go away."

We tried it. I read from
Don Quixote
for an hour before looking back again. She was still there. "That's it," I announced, putting the book away. "I'm not being shadowed all the way to New York. Let's wait and find out what she wants."

"Sure. But I can tell you what it is." Her expression was smug. "It's me."

"Why, of course. What else could it be?" I coughed into my hand. We waited as the young woman caught up to us. She looked faintly embarrassed but said nothing, just stood before us.

"Is there something we can do for you?" I asked.

She flushed. "I'd like—I'd like to come with you." She smiled. Bright silver points glittered in her brown eyes.

I raised an eyebrow. "To come with us?"

She nodded.

"Why?"

"Because I've waited a long time for something like this to come my way." She looked longingly at Ariel. "You're a unicorn."

"Heavens," Ariel said dryly. "How astute."

"And you talk."

She snorted. "Good trick, huh? You'd never guess it took two people to operate this thing." She turned sideways. "Look—no seams.

"I've never seen anything like you. I mean, I've seen magical animals before, but never a unicorn, never anything so  .  .  . so  .  .  ."

"Beautiful? Noble, pure, that sort of thing?"

The young woman nodded.

"Okay," I broke in. "So you're both members of the Unicorn Admiration Society. I don't want to seem rude, and I'm glad you've finally seen a unicorn, but we're in a hurry."

"Fine. I don't need anything but what I have with me."

"I don't think you understand. We're traveling together. The three of us."

"Oh, no. I'm not letting an opportunity like this get away. I won't get another chance like this again. I know."

"We're going to New York," I said.

"Fine."

"It's dangerous. You'd slow us down."

"I can take care of myself."

George followed the conversation like an observer at a ping-pong match. I was getting angry. Who the hell was she to come out of the clear blue sky and demand to go with us? "Look," I said. "I'm not even going to argue about it. You can't come with us."

Ariel stepped forward slowly. The sun was just past overhead and her hooves spearpointed the light with polished chrome newness. "Child," she said—the young woman looked surprised at the word; she was at least my age—"you can follow us, but you'll never have me."

Her expression showed she didn't know what Ariel was talking about.

"Try to touch me," said Ariel. "And you'll understand."

She reached toward Ariel's muzzle, a child reaching for the shiny, golden ornament on a high branch of a Christmas tree. Her hand stopped five inches from the side of Ariel's face. She frowned and pushed her elbow, but the hand only trembled and went no farther.

"You can't have your dreams," said Ariel. "You'd only be wishful and frustrated if you came along."

"I don't understand," George said. "I can touch her no problem."

"Yeah, I know," I replied. "So can I."

"But why  .  .  .?" Her round-faced features drew in puzzlement.

"You have to be pure to touch a unicorn," Ariel whispered. She looked intently at the frowning young woman. "I see what you need," she said, "and because of all you desire, I am for the first time in my life sorry this is so." Something seemed to pass between them; Ariel seemed to understand this total stranger as if she'd been inside her head. I didn't follow it too well. But the woman made a cutting motion in the air with her library book and said, "Okay, rules are rules and I can't touch you. But I've waited ever since I can remember for magic—real magic, not this spell stuff or bone throwing by candlelight—and I can't let it walk by without me, not after it's passed right next to me in the middle of the afternoon. I just can't." She jerked her head to me. "Look, I'm sorry if I'm coming on too strong. But you try reading fantasy books all your life—have a Bradbury dream walk by your bus bench on a hot day, with everything you've ever wanted tied up in a neat bundle—and see if you wouldn't do almost anything to have it."

"Ariel is my friend," I said. Something about her tone bothered me; it had that religious-fanatic tinge. "Nobody 'has' her, dreams or not."

Ariel enunciated each word clearly. "I won't be worshiped. Not by anybody, ever."

George's face looked as if he were squinting at a bright light. "How come I can touch her and you can touch her, but she can't? I still don't get it."

"Aah—" I raised a hand, and dropped it quickly. "Because you've never been fucked, and I've never been fucked, and she has."

She flushed deep red. "I'm not ashamed of it. And my name is Shaughnessy, if you'd like to know."

"I wouldn't like to know. Look, this is crazy. We have to go." George still stared at me, open-mouthed.

"I'll follow you," she warned. "You can't keep me from doing that."

I thought about it. Short of violent means, I guess I couldn't. I sighed. Why did I always get the nuts? If we kept collecting people, Malachi would have a caravan strung out behind him from New York to Atlanta.

I frowned at her. "Let's go," I told Ariel and George. George looked uncertain but came along, Ariel cast me a baleful glance. I stared back until she looked away.

I turned my back to Shaughnessy's look and started walking. After a hundred yards I glanced back. She was just behind us, library book in hand. I turned back before she saw me looking and opened the
Don Quixote
to where I'd left off. I began reading.

"I don't want to hear it right now, Pete," said Ariel. There was something in her tone I couldn't quite read, a flavor between sullenness and melancholy. "Maybe later."

I handed the book to George and he put it in its pocket. After ten minutes I remembered to ask George what he'd got away with from the mall.

He turned away from where he'd been looking back toward Shaughnessy. "Huh?"

I snuck a glance. She was treading along about five hundred feet behind us, book open, eating an apple. I wondered if she'd had it with her, or what? "I said, what did you end up bringing back from the mall?"

"Oh." He grinned, sending large quantities of freckles closer to his forehead. "I got away with some pretty neat stuff. Here—" He opened Ariel's pack, excusing himself to her. An arm went in up to the elbow and came out with a package. "New boot laces," he said. "But you got new boots."

"That's okay. I can always use them when the others wear out. They will before too long, I'm sure." I was conscious of what's-her-name behind us.

George tossed them back into the pack and pulled out a Frisbee. "I thought it'd give us something to do when we got bored," he explained to my heaven-cast gaze.

In went the Frisbee. Out came a wind-up Timex. "I want to put it on but I don't know what time to set it for," he said.

"It's two o'clock," said Ariel.

He brightened and pulled the button with his teeth, then set the dial at two and wound the watch. It made a noise like a lone cricket.

"Didn't you get yourself clothes other than the ones you have on?" I asked while he rummaged again.

"Nope." He had to reach up on tiptoe and pull down on the pocket to get into Ariel's pack. She complained that the straps cut into her side. I made her stop and bend down so George could reach in for more things. She grumbled to herself but complied. George pulled things out and we resumed walking, Ariel dragging a trail of sparks behind front left and back right hooves. I wondered if Shaughnessy saw that. Was Shaughnessy a first name or a last?

George tossed me a brown paper bag. Things inside clinked when I caught it. The paper crackled comfortably. "I looked at your blowgun darts and saw how you made them," he said. "Maybe you can use that stuff."

I looked into the bag. About a dozen pieces of foot-long steel wire. A pair of wirecutters (I already had a pair in the pack, but George didn't know that). A half-dozen strands of heavy plastic-beaded necklaces, the kind that are supposed to look like pearls and don't. "Hey, great stuff. Thanks, George!"

He nodded, pleased I was pleased. "I wasn't sure how big the beads should be, so I got different sizes. I got the wire from an umbrella."

"Good thinking." That had never occurred to me; until then I had used either coathangers or piano wire.

The final item was George's crowning glory: fishing arrows. They were the kind with four thin metal lengths that sweep back from the sharp head. Once embedded they couldn't be pulled loose without leaving a hole the size of a baseball. Nasty things, but efficient. The only bow I had was the Barnett, and the arrows would have been totally useless to me had George not been lucky enough—or wise enough; I didn't ask—to find arrows with screw-on heads. I could remove the heads, throw away the long arrow shafts, and put them on my threaded crossbow-bolt shafts.

I thanked George again, put the bag of blowgun-dart materials in the lower compartment of my pack, and began unscrewing crossbow-bolt heads. Soon I was finished and Ariel asked me to read from
Don Quixote
.

Shaughnessy followed us all day.